Note: The data collected by the unix app is by default placed into a separate index called ‘os’ so it will not be searchable within splunk unless you either go through the UNIX app, or include the following in your search query: “index=os” or “index=os OR index=main” (don’t paste doublequotes).

You also will have to install sysstatif you want to monitor your server resources.

Step 9 (Optional): Customize UNIX app configuration on forwarders:

Look at inputs.conf in /opt/splunkforwarder/etc/apps/unix/local/ and /opt/splunkforwarder/etc/apps/unix/default/ The ~default/inputs. path shows what the app can do, but everything is disabled.

The ~local/inputs.conf shows what has been enabled – if you want to change polling intervals or disable certain scripts, make the changes in ~local/inputs.conf.

Note that Splunk also has a centralized configuration management server called Deployment Server. This can be used to define server classes and push out specific apps and configurations to those classes. So you may want to have your production servers class have the unix app configured to execute those scripts listed in ~local/inputs at the default values, but maybe your QA servers only need a few of the full stack, and at longer polling intervals.

Using Deployment Server, you can configure these classes, configure the app once centrally, and push the appropriate app/configuration to the right systems.